Mad About You

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Mad About You is an American sitcom that aired on NBC from September 23, 1992, to May 24, 1999. The show starred Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt as a newly married couple in New York City. Reiser played Paul Buchman, a documentary film maker. Hunt played Jamie Stemple Buchman, a public relations specialist. Near the end of the show's run, the couple had a baby daughter, whom they named Mabel.

The series focused mainly on the newlyweds while they dealt with everything from humorous daily minutiae to major struggles. The show's willingness to find comedy in realistic situations and observational dialogue garnered it comparisons to Seinfeld, another NBC comedy about thirty-somethings in New York City.

Helen Hunt and Paul Reiser were paid $1 million per show for the last season, but ratings fell sharply that year. The series was shuffled away from its Tuesday slot to prop up a flagging Monday line-up of comedies on NBC.

The show's theme song, "Final Frontier", was composed by Reiser and Don Was. The theme was originally performed by Andrew Gold, but a version performed by Anita Baker made its debut midway through the 1997 season. Baker's version was used for the rest of the show's run and appears on the show's soundtrack album. Gold's version is available on the collection Thank You For Being A Friend: The Best Of Andrew Gold.

Crossovers With Friends

Lisa Kudrow played the recurring role of Ursula, a flaky waitress at Riff's, a local restaurant that Paul and Jamie frequented. Kudrow went on to star in the NBC sitcom Friends, playing the also somewhat flaky character of Phoebe Buffay, and for a time both series shared the same Thursday night line-up. While not originally intended, the characters of Ursula and Phoebe were later found to be identical twin sisters. In a Friends episode, as part of a night of NBC sitcom crossovers, Jamie and Fran walk into Central Perk and mistake Phoebe for Ursula. Possibly for legal reasons (Mad About You was produced by Columbia/Tristar, Friends by Warner Brothers), Hunt and Kenzle were not identified on screen as Jamie and Fran.

In the 3rd season episode, "Pandora's Box," Jamie causes a city-wide power blackout in New York City, and the effects of the blackout are seen in the Friends episode, "The One with the Blackout," and also in the episode "Birthday in the Big House" of the short-lived NBC sitcom "Madman of the People." All 3 episodes originally aired during the evening of November 3, 1994, alongside a Seinfeld episode which did not incorporate the blackout premise.